WSJ on the WSJ

The Wall Street Journal, unsuprisingly, has the best coverage today on the subject of itself. The lead article is long, and packs in lots of information, and goes some way to answering my question about the future of the newspaper's editorial independence under Rupert Murdoch. In fact, it answers the question twice, in two opposite ways. First comes the pessimism:

Mr. Murdoch has tended to put a strong personal imprint on papers he owns, from the feisty tabloid New York Post to papers in Britain and Australia. He is known for phoning editors and even reporters about individual stories. The Post's media and business sections sometimes delight in skewering rivals, and Mr. Murdoch's political preferences have been clear in the news pages as well as the editorial page.
Similarly, News Corp.'s Fox News cable channel, despite its slogan "fair and balanced," is considered by many liberals to pursue a conservative agenda in its news coverage as well as its editorial opinions.
A News Corp. spokesman declined to comment on the issue of editorial independence.

Then, much lower down, comes the optimism:

Mr. Murdoch's letter said he was prepared to structure a deal in a number of different ways. They could include the issuing of Class A News Corp. shares; a new class of convertible shares in News Corp.; or potentially another security that would be issued on a tax-free basis that would pay out an attractive dividend. Mr. Murdoch said his company's board had endorsed the offer "enthusiastically." He offered to set up safeguards to ensure the Journal's editorial independence through, for instance, creation of a separate board.

This I haven't seen elsewhere. It's a tantalizing tidbit, tinged with hopefulness, but also a little hard to believe. Are there any newspapers which are genuinely editorially independent from their owners? Even the prized independence of the Guardian, in the UK, was achieved only by making the owner itself an independent trust.